Bicriterial Approximation for the Incremental Prize-Collecting Steiner-Tree Problem

We consider an incremental variant of the rooted prize-collecting Steiner-tree problem with a growing budget constraint. While no incremental solution exists that simultaneously approximates the optimum for all budgets, we show that a bicriterial (α,μ)-approximation is possible, i.e., a solution that with budget B+α for all B ∈ ℝ_{≥ 0} is a multiplicative μ-approximation compared to the optimum solution with budget B. For the case that the underlying graph is a tree, we present a polynomial-time density-greedy algorithm that computes a (χ,1)-approximation, where χ denotes the eccentricity of the root vertex in the underlying graph, and show that this is best possible. An adaptation of the density-greedy algorithm for general graphs is (γ,2)-competitive where γ is the maximal length of a vertex-disjoint path starting in the root. While this algorithm does not run in polynomial time, it can be adapted to a (γ,3)-competitive algorithm that runs in polynomial time. We further devise a capacity-scaling algorithm that guarantees a (3χ,8)-approximation and, more generally, a ((4𝓁 - 1)χ, (2^{𝓁 + 2})/(2^𝓁 -1))-approximation for every fixed 𝓁 ∈ ℕ.